(9 Apr 2019) LEADIN:
Yemen is facing another surge in cholera after hosting the world's worst epidemic of the disease.
Roughly 150,000 new cases have been reported this year, killing 300 people.
STORYLINE:
Yemen's hospitals are bursting at the seams.
A spike in cholera cases means more and more patients need urgent medical attention.
Here at the Republican Hospital in Taiz, they have even resorted to putting beds in the hallways to keep up with demand.
This is not the first outbreak of the potentially deadly infectious disease.
Cholera spread across Yemen in late 2016 and throughout much of 2017 and 2018. Well over one million suspected cases were reported and around 3,000 people are thought to have died.
The epidemic ebbed late last year but a new surge in the disease has produced roughly 150,000 reported cholera cases and nearly 300 deaths since the start of this year.
World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier says fatality rates have dropped though.
"The attack rates and the case fatality rates - meaning the amount of people who succumb to this disease - are actually lower still this time which is good news," he says.
He adds that those who were immunized against cholera two years ago will still be protected from the disease.
The state of streets in Taiz give obvious signs as to why cholera is spreading.
Unsanitary piles of rubbish line the roads.
And access to water supplies are difficult - across the country more than 17 million people don't have clean water, according to the United Nations.
Those are prime conditions for the spread of cholera, a disease caused by faeces-tainted water and food. Cholera can kill swiftly if untreated, its victims drained by diarrhoea, vomiting and fever.
Lindmeier says a number of factors have triggered this latest outbreak.
"Cholera is endemic, so you can see the disease spreading and springing up in different districts because it is simply there," he says.
"Second, the rainy season has started much earlier this year and that's excavating (sic, exacerbating) the situation of course. The infrastructure is more destroyed than it used to be, so we have a failing water supply system, we have sewage systems which are destroyed. Water supply is difficult."
The country has also battled a lack of vaccines.
A shipment of half a million doses was blocked from Yemen in summer 2017, just as cholera was spiralling out of control.
The UN was not able to start the vaccination campaign until May 2018.
Lindmeier says 400,000 people have been vaccinated in recent months which he calls a "good start".
But, doctors on the ground in Yemen are concerned that the current surge in cases could rival the 2017 outbreak that became the world's worst flare-up.
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